


Are We Fools Just For Believing

by Peapods



Series: The Kenobi Family Band [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-15 21:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5801290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Peapods/pseuds/Peapods
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three generations of women fight for survival, even if that means giving up their loves and their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Are We Fools Just For Believing

They screw up. It is, possibly, inevitable. Padme is throwing up for a week before she realizes. They sit down to dinner and suddenly Padme has a very disturbing thought and says, “Oh no.”

There aren’t medical facilities on Tatooine that could rival any of the knowledge Obi-Wan has from battlefields and years with the Jedi Order. He had been there for the birth of the twins and had handled younglings at the Temple. He tells her that he will deliver their child safely into the world, even if that world has none of the safety he would wish to grant them.

Padme, for her part, is terrified of what is to come in the next few months. She has done this before with no one at her side. She has done this with great expectations for the future. She has done this and has nothing to show for it but the knowledge of what this pregnancy will entail. She is sullen and angry. She throws up far more than she had with the twins and blames Obi-Wan. He remarks, mildly, that he has no advice to offer her as he does not remember his mother.

She is struck with that, at times, and it usually pulls her anger up short. The closest thing Obi-Wan had to a parent was his Master, Qui-Gon Jinn. There is a surge beneath her breast, pride and hope and humility. She might need to guide him on how to be father to his child, but she doubts he will need much. She has a vague remembrance of him a few years ago, returning from the front and greeting a group of school children that had turned out to see the return of their heroes. Anakin had played climbing frame to them, laughing and tossing them around. Obi-Wan had knelt to their level, listening intently to each one, brushing hair from their foreheads, smiling gently.

Two fathers. 

Padme honestly isn’t sure which type she now prefers.

*****

The baby comes in the night. They have been up talking, arguing over names again, when she feels it. 

“Oh,” she says faintly, grabbing at her swollen stomach. “Uh, Ben- _oh hell_.”

“Oh dear, it appears we will have to resolve our argument sooner rather than later,” Obi-Wan remarks as he leaps from bed. He’s already gathering everything he needs. She wants to tell him to slow down, to _calm_ down, but she’s panicking a little herself. She’s never really done this before. In her head, it sounds ludicrous, but it’s true. She had been halfway to death with pain and heartbreak during the birth of the twins. She had given birth out of necessity, her abused body unable to withstand the strain any longer. Now, it feels natural, it feels necessary but only because her child-- _their_ child--is ready to be born.

They wait nearly ten hours. Obi-Wan is nonplussed and after one particularly trying contraction, Padme can’t help laughing hysterically at him. 

“It’s not like you’re going to have to catch,” she gasps, giddy on the adrenaline rush of receding pain.

He levels a look at her that could fell a bantha, but she can already feel another contraction coming on.

“ _Ohhh_ I think this is it!” she warns him, teeth locked tight. When he spreads his knees and reaches out his arms as if awaiting a toss, she reaches for the nearest thing and throws it with unerring accuracy at his head.

Twenty minutes later, Quinn Naberrie-Kenobi arrives with a hearty squall and a Force presence that lights up the planet.

*****

Their daughter has chestnut hair and hazel, ever-changing eyes and she is so very much her father’s child. She trails after him at three years old, asking questions, never hesitating with another. Quinn nods her head and rubs at her upper lip when he answers them. Her accent is that cultured Coruscanti that Padme has always found so delightful. She has no greater joy than watching them, listening to them.

She worries, of course. The Jundland Wastes are no place for a family and she has no peers to socialize with. Quinn exhibits nothing of concern now. She is content with her parents, her entire world, and her time with Obi-Wan learning the Force is invaluable.

Padme stores only a small nugget of resentment that her other children will not have this advantage. 

Quinn has inherited quite a bit from Padme as well. For one thing, she does not share her father’s disdain for high speeds. When they go out in the ‘speeder, she urges Obi-Wan to go faster. Padme only laughs at the disgruntled look on his face. She also has very little problem speaking her mind, never letting her father get away with his well-loved half-truths and points-of-view. Padme only raises her eyebrow in challenge during these moments.

“She gets this from you,” Obi-Wan remarks in a not-at-all complimentary way when they see that Quinn has taken apart their newest vaporator and built a sort-of house for her dolls from it.

“The ability to have fun? Yes, I suppose she did,” Padme says, digging an elbow into his side to indicate her joke. He rolls his eyes, but she can see the smile quirking beneath his increasingly-white mustache. There is a pang in her heart. He is aging so quickly in the desert, with the grief of loss and the burden of responsibility hanging over him. She knows she is a balm, he has said as much, and Quinn creates a profound transformation in him, but it is hard for him to escape the past now.

*****

She knows something is wrong when Obi-Wan returns from Anchorhead one day with a dead-eyed look. She advises Quinn to keep coloring and goes to him, taking his unresisting hands.

“Ben? What’s wrong?” she says quietly. He says nothing, breathing deeply. She can feel him centering himself, resolving something. She is suddenly terrified. “Ben?”

“You’re not safe,” he says, very quietly, very certainly.

She will not tremble, she will not break, but something in her fractures. “Quinn?” she chokes out.

“There was a man in town. He was asking questions. I managed to-I cornered him. I killed him,” he whispers, horrified with himself. “He was of the Dark Side, he could feel their power. Her and Luke probably, but he only mentioned that there was a flare in the past three years and she’s not _safe_.”

“Luke-!”

“Will be fine. He is not living with a Jedi who has been teaching him, he is entirely unaware of the power he possesses. I can still protect him. Padme-”

“Do _not_ ,” she interrupts, suddenly furious. “Do not presume that her safety is solely contingent upon you, Ben Kenobi. I would give my _life_ for her and would do more besides.”

His eyes warm; he has never underestimated her since that one horrendous fight about her agency. “I know,” he says, not smiling, but so fond. “That’s why you have to take her away. Protect her.”

All her anger evaporates and her stomach drops to somewhere near her knees as she divines what he is saying.

“Ben,” she whispers, “No, we can-we can shield her! You can stop teaching her or we could move further away from Luke-” she stops herself in horror. She steps back from Obi-Wan with a hand over her mouth, but he is already moving towards her, enveloping her.

“No, Padme, no, do not do that to yourself.”

She lets out the smallest sob, “I wanted to protect her over hi-him.”

“No, my love, no. You only want to keep close to him. Closer to him than,” he let out a shaky sigh. “Dearest, you must leave Tatooine. You must take her and you must go and I am so sorry for it. More sorry than I can,” He pulls away with a wet gasp of his own, their hands grasping at each others' shoulders. They have been in this pose before and she feels just as helpless. “I made a vow to watch over Luke, to be what he needs when the time comes. My heart,” his voice cracks, “My heart is in agony over the thought of you and Quinn being away from me, but so long as you are safe, I will accept it. I will do my duty.”

Padme, for all her heartache, is caught in an epiphany. Obi-Wan is doing what Anakin never could: letting go. He has judged the situation the will of the Force and has ceded it, even it will cost him all he holds dear.

She offers him no further argument. She puts it away, doesn’t yet release it to the Force, but acknowledges that she must. She puts it away and she goes back to Quinn, still thoroughly uninterested in her parents’ conversation even if she could feel the currents of it in the Force. They color pictures the rest of the afternoon and eat dinner, having a normal evening. They both read to her as they put her to bed, Obi-Wan taking only a little more time than usual, kissing her gently on her forehead, running a finger through her curls.

They make plans, quickly and quietly, putting in a call to a member of the Rebellion on Yavin IV. Padme and Quinn will leave in three days time. Padme can see the weight of it in Obi-Wan’s eyes.

They make love and Padme lets out her banked grief, tears streaming into her hair even as he pleasures her. She does not know what offense they made in their pasts, perhaps in previous lives, but she cannot imagine that this much heartache is owed to anyone. She wants to feel him this way always: above her, but close, so close that her breasts brush against his chest, so close that she doesn’t have reach far to close her arms around his shoulders. Obi-Wan drags it out as long as he can. It feels like hours and it must be because she has been hovering in a state of euphoria for so long, tired but needing every new press of skin, every smooth, slow thrust, every whiskery kiss. She hopes, in vain, that he will leave behind more than a few bruises, more than a little beard-burn. She wants another child, another Kenobi, but maybe this time with beautiful auburn hair, a little boy with a gentle smile and compact stature. She wants so badly, entreats the Force, but knows in her soul, she will not be granted her wish.

She gasps as she feels the knot within her, tightened so slowly by Obi-Wan’s ministrations, start to unravel. She gasps not from the pleasure or the dismay to be reaching her peak, but from a sudden gift from the Force.

Quinn is important. _Quinn_ will be the bearer of Light.

The thought is gone as soon as it passes through her. It leaves behind a conviction she carries with her until the day she dies.

*****

Thirty five years later, Quinn Naberrie faces down Kylo Ren, her blue saber lit, but held defensively, only willing to fight if he makes her. She knows this is her nephew, but there is desperate, fierce need to protect lit in her breast and she will not hesitate to cut him down. She thinks a silent apology to Leia, who has only recently learned Quinn’s lineage, when circumstances had rendered her omissions untenable.

“Your namesake would be ashamed,” she rasps out as the young man approaches. She sees the flinch and enjoys a moment of pure, vicious pleasure. Remorse follows--her father would have been disappointed in her taking pleasure in that comment--but she has no time for the feeling. Their lightsabers clash. For all that she is powerful in the Force, older and wiser, he has passion on his side. She has exhaustion and a certainty that this is not her battle to fight or her war to win.

She dies with her daughter’s name on her breath and the hope that she has been delivered to safety.

*****

Rey dreams of a woman with ever changing eyes and a warm smile. She dreams of a cultured, clear voice and emulates it during the day, holding conversations with invisible people, or with her homemade doll. She dreams of a kind woman with a riot of brown hair and endless determination who gives her strength. _You are good enough. You will change the galaxy. You are not alone._

Perhaps they are only wishful imaginings of a girl abandoned to desolate sand, but somewhere, in her chest, in her memories…

The truth is ready to take its first steps into the light.

**Author's Note:**

> AKA: The Sequel No One Asked For! I promised myself I wouldn't get sucked into this theory because of my very obvious love and bias toward Obi-Wan Kenobi, but realized that Rey would be a lovely little amalgamation of the him and Padme (once removed) and realized I'd already written the thing and went "what the hell."
> 
> This posting, having sat in drafts for at least a week, brought to you by Percocet: don't fracture your foot while drunk, kids.


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